The wartime economy of Erzacami was constant. Especially on the kitchen front. Some time ago I wrote about acorn coffee, which replaced the longing coffee drinkers with a small black cup. Now it's time for Erzac's sweets.
Almond trees like a mild climate and a warm breeze. On the Vistula River, they are grown at best as ornamental shrubs, which still require covering for the winter. Therefore, it is difficult to expect them to shower gardeners with abundant crops. When the Second World War broke out, the import of almonds, like many other non-essential products, ceased. Of course, small amounts of them were available on the black market almost all the time, but they cost a fortune.
It would seem that Poles rather had to forget about marzipan, almond cookies and the crunch of almonds themselves. Nothing could be more wrong. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers proved in this case that their creativity is unbeatable. They have learned to do without almonds without losing their flavor.
Almond sweets were made of beans or semolina with the addition of almond oil and sugar or sweetener.
You could also make them, for example, from… potatoes. The recipe for an almond substitute mass was given in her book "109 dishes" (Warsaw 1941) by the invaluable Elżbieta Kiewnarska.
Ingredients:
80 decagrams of potatoes
20 decagrams of sugar
10 saccharin lozenges
5 drops of almond oil
any shortbread
The female art of survival in Aleksandra Zaprutko-Janicka's book "Occupation from the kitchen".
Preparation method:
Boil the peeled potatoes, evaporate it, and crush it very thoroughly. Mix them with sugar and fry in a little butter, stirring constantly. Finally, transfer to a bowl and blend, adding almond oil and sweetener. Rub the mass well and spread it on the rolled dough. Bake like the poppy seed strudel.
Impressions:
The recipe does not specify what kind of cake should be prepared. Many cooks have their own, proven recipe for this element of strudel and would not like to change it for anything.
When I was testing baking for the rubric, I decided to experiment. Instead of the classic dough, I made one of buckwheat flour. It wasn't quite a good idea though.
Almond strudel without a single almond.
Kneaded dough made of buckwheat flour is not very elastic and when spreading it with filling and curling it broke a little, and it cracked during baking. However, this does not change a minor fact - the taste of the strudel was much more interesting thanks to him.
I took strucla with me to two meetings with me this week (in Kraków and Wrocław; another one in a week in Łódź! ). Although opinions about whether it was good or not were divided, it was quickly disappearing from the plates. Readers were surprised, above all, that the cake actually tasted like almonds . On the other hand, those who first tried and then found out what they ate were surprised that there was not a hint of the real ones in it ...